In the midst of Avengers: Age of Ultron’s release blowing up the box office, director Joss Whedon has deactivated his Twitter account following the backlash mostly regarding Scarlett Johansson’s character Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow – although he hasn’t confirmed his reason for leaving. An avid tweeter, Whedon’s last tweet was a thank you message to those who’ve supported the film.
There’s speculation that trolls and death threats are the reason behind Whedon’s break up with the social media platform. Since there’s a long list of tweets threateningly and vehemently directed to him from fans enraged about the romance between Black Widow and the Hulk, the sexist portrayal of Black Widow, and other things about Age of Ultron, it has been reported that Whedon is wildly upset with the allegations. Known as a fighter for gender equality and an author of strong female characters (including the famous Buffy), Whedon was called a “hypocrite” and “pseudo-feminist” among other slurs.
In response to Whedon’s departure, the rest of Twitter started to throw shade on “rabid feminists” and “geeks” who were considered to be the force behind the criticism on the Avengers film. Meanwhile, other’s expressed that while they weren’t personal fans of Whedon’s or didn’t like how things turned out in the film, harassment is always a no-go territory. Whedon made no mention about the abusive tweets or Black Widow during his last days on Twitter, but he had told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year that Twitter “really started to take up a huge amount of my head space. I’m making a movie, I got a responsibility… Until I have a script I truly believe in or a tweet that’s really remarkable, I can just walk away and get back to the storytelling I need to do.”
Maybe we’ll see him return to Twitter soon, but we think that it’s likely that we won’t. You can read our review on the newest Avengers film here.
